


Let All Wanderers Find Their Way

by AllISeeAreKingsAndThieves



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe- The Giries Adopt Erik, Antoinette Giry deals with it by stealing a child from a traveling circus, Found Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, absolutely not historically or canonically accurate, but they have some okay ideas somewhere I guess’, but will incorporate characters from the novel, everyone deals with grief differently, more tags to be added as story develops, realized recently that this is just me going ‘fuck LND, taking mainly from film canon for the set-up, the 2004 movie made insinuations that irritated me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:34:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24415954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllISeeAreKingsAndThieves/pseuds/AllISeeAreKingsAndThieves
Summary: Little Meg Giry and her mother visit a traveling circus and leave again with a small boy in a sackcloth mask.The Opera Populaire has never been haunted before by the man called the Phantom of the Opera and it seems that it never will, as the path leading to tragedy beneath the opera house vanishes with Madame Giry’s outstretched hand.
Relationships: Erik | Phantom of the Opera & Madame Giry, Erik | Phantom of the Opera & Meg Giry, Madame Giry & Meg Giry
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The 2004 Phantom movie confused me recently and I thought that, when Christine told Meg that she’d been hearing the Angel in her head since she was a child, that meant that the Phantom had been a child at the time as well. Though I quickly learned otherwise (yikes), the idea didn’t want to leave me: little Christine, who can barely sing after the death of her father, chasing after the voice of the young boy in the walls. And then, of course, I fell for Meg and Madame Giry and the rest, of course, is history. 
> 
> If this isn’t for you, that’s alright. It’ll be slow going, as it isn’t my main priority. I hope you enjoy nonetheless.

_Paris, February 1856_

Meg Giry is just five when her father dies. He was a steadfast and stalwart man, her father, able to stand against her formidable mother with a grace and delicacy that five year old Meg has not yet needed to master.

The family mourns, of course, as does the theater. Monsieur Jules was well-beloved among them. Though he had little to say in life, what he had said will remain precious to them for a time. People treat Madame Giry- Maman to Meg- as if she is breakable and fragile after her husband’s death. They only do so until they learn better. Maman is neither breakable nor fragile. She teaches ballet, a dance that destroys the fragile as easily as it courts it, and she has a reputation to uphold among the girls she teaches.

Meg keeps her grief to herself. Her papa is gone. Whisked away from her for some secret purpose. People tell her that perhaps the good lord needed another angel in heaven or maybe just someone to help with heaven’s staging. Meg thinks privately that the good lord cannot have needed her father as much as she does. 

Someone tells her that heaven is a beautiful bright place where the dead can look down and see the living and Meg grows to believe that heaven is like the ceiling of the opera house, blue and bright and lit with otherworldly light. She thinks that there are windows there too, from which her father can look and wave to her. She waves back to him if no one is looking, waves through the windows of the theater and through the windows of the dormitories of the dancers. 

Her mother catches her at it one day. Meg turns from the window to find her mother watching, her solemn face still. She’s dressed in her mourning black and it makes her look so severe even around Meg alone.

When Meg tells her she’s waving to Papa, for a terrible moment, the solemn mask cracks. For one brief moment, Meg sees a wave of emotions crash over her mother’s face and the rawness of them shocks her. Then the wave recedes and there is only Maman again, solemn and still. 

“The circus is in town,” she says, as if Meg had never said anything at all about Papa. “I had thought you might like to accompany the dancers and myself.”

Meg has never seen the circus. “Is it any good?” she asks doubtfully. The maestro calls the chorus a circus when they are behaving badly. And sometimes the divas refer to people as clowns if they prove incompetent. Nothing related to a circus seems then like it should be any good at all.

Her mother smiles slightly. “The circus is amusing, my Meg. It is not always a matter of quality when it comes to these things.” She holds her hand out for Meg to take and the two of them make their way back to the dormitories. 

The dancers are excited. Most are like Meg and have never seen a circus before. They become a flurry of frantic legs and chattering mouths when Maman announces their little outing and there is a great deal of pocket money being borrowed and promised for little things. From what Meg can gather as she laces up her boots, different parts of a circus cost money, like different shows need different tickets. 

Maman watches the dancers fuss themselves ready, reminding them only to retrieve their warm things as the night will prove biting. She does not have to remind them that practice is early and that they will need to be careful with their time; the glinting of her eyes reminds them all too well. Those eyes say that this is only a special treat and that treats are not for dancers who are late to practice. 

Meg walks with her mother behind the gaggle of dancers as they flock from the theater. The city is larger than the opera house, the night larger than the city, and Meg is only very little, so she holds fast to Maman’s hand and thinks about the sorts of things that one might see in a circus. She worries that there might be bears. There is a play wherein a man is chased by a bear and it is one of her least favorites. Once the directors brought in a real bear and Meg ran to hide as soon as she heard. She didn’t see the bear, but the show was a roaring success. 

Apparently circuses have treats as well. She hears some of the older girls talking about circus crackers and looks to her mother. Sometimes Maman lets her have little treats, but Papa was always the one who would sneak them with her, to Maman’s great exasperation. 

Maman catches her eye and sighs a little sigh. “You may have two treats,” she says, in a soft voice that keeps the chattering dancers from hearing. “Then we are at a lovely three, hm?”

“Two is good!” Meg agrees. Two is better than she could have ever dreamed. Maman is obviously only counting the circus itself as one treat. Meg savors the possibilities as she listens more intently to the dancers talk about circuses and their fare. 

One of the bigger girls, Sorelli, talks animatedly to her friends not about food, but about the monsters on display in the circus freak shows. She rattles off a list of ghoulish attributes that has Meg’s eyes growing wider and wider with each new addition until finally she blurts, “Do people really look like that?”

“Of course not,” says another of the big girls, Ernestine, who is twelve and therefore knows these things. “It’s all stage makeup. It’s an opera.”

“Oh,” says Meg, reassured. 

“Sorelli is just being a cabbage head,” continues a third girl, affectionately pressing Sorelli’s hand to show that she means no harm by the name.

“There are most certainly people who look the ways she’s described,” says Maman mildly. “But, my Meg, that is all they are. Just people.”

“Even the monsters?” asks Sorelli, shuddering. 

“I think so,” Maman says, tucking a stray hair behind Meg’s ear and adjusting the hood of her cloak. “But you cannot always tell a monster by how they appear. You cannot always tell a good person from a bad, can you?”

Meg holds tight to her mother’s hand and thinks of how even the flightiest, meanest divas can be heralded as angels by the audience, even if they strike out like cranky cats at dancers unlucky enough to stumble over them. She thinks she understands for a moment.

All thought is driven from her head however as the dancers in the front of the group start to call back to the rest, “It’s the circus, the circus!” Clever feet quicken their steps, slow enough so that perhaps Madame Giry won’t notice. However, they’ve forgotten that attached to their teacher’s hand is little Meg, whose legs are not yet long enough to keep up the pace. 

“Go on,” says Maman to the dancers, rather than being scolding. “A night off the lead of the opera house will do none of you harm.” This has been a favorite saying of Meg’s papa, often turned against Maman when she is too absorbed in her work, and Meg looks up at her upon hearing it. “Conduct yourselves as _ladies,_ mind you!” Maman adds, sounding a little more like herself then.

Meg’s curious gaze attracts her mother’s eye and Maman gives her a secret smile as the dancers leap away like deer among the colorful tents and bright fires. Without fanfare, their group dwindles down to Meg and her mother, who stoops to pick her up. Meg is a girl of five now and she knows that she is getting too big for her mother to be able to carry for long, but she rests her head on Maman’s shoulder for a little while as their fare is paid and the ticket-taker extols the virtues of the world around them. 

They spend a little time this way in the crisp night air, walking between the tents with no destination in mind. Then Meg spies the signs for the attractions and squirms around to read them and Maman lowers her to the ground so she might stand on her own two feet. Meg’s piping voice reads aloud the painted signs and she chases each to the one beyond it, captivated by the hand-painted illustrations that are somehow so far from what the artists of the theater create and yet just as fascinating. There is a small monkey painted in each, sometimes screeching, often looking out with curious black eyes. Meg decides she likes it. 

The circus has no walls or windows at all, just torches in the night and tents extending far far into the distance under the silvery smile of the waxing moon, and Meg spins and spins to take it all in, her cloak flying out behind her. When she stops, near dizzy with it and nose pink from the cold night, Maman’s hands are warm at her shoulders to steady her. “Be careful now,” says her mother.

“Your form, Meg, your form,” she responds, parroting the way her mother talks to the dancers during lessons.

Her mimicry calls a laugh from Maman. Her fingers tweak the tip of Meg’s cold nose fondly. “What would you like to see first, my Meg?”

Meg looks around and around and her eyes light upon the biggest of the tents. A portrait of a large horse rears up under a flying man and the horse could be Caesar the opera horse’s twin. She quite likes Caesar; though she is not really allowed to touch him, sometimes the stablehands pretend not to see her when she tries and the great white horse is always calm. “Let’s go and see the horses,” she suggests. 

In the big tent, they find many of their dancers as well, crowded into the audience. Meg bumps into Andrée, one of the eldest ballerinas, and the bigger girl pats her head and offers her some of her packet of roasted nuts. These crunch between Meg’s teeth as Maman lifts her up once more. 

The horse in the ring isn’t nearly as big or beautiful as Caesar, but the man astride him shouts and dances over his back as if he is simply onstage. Meg’s eyes widen, hoping that she can drink it all in. There are clowns tumbling after him, pantomiming the gendarmes chasing the handsome criminal. The dancers cheer and stomp their feet along with the crowd and Meg claps her hands as he continues to evade them. 

The performer triumphs, tossing coins to a gaggle of acrobats dressed as the poor, who twist themselves into shapes and do flips out of gratitude. Meg’s feet involuntarily twitch to try the cartwheels. 

And then the show is over and the man in the hat announces the next, but Meg has no interest in seeing the flying man. People fly at the opera house all the time. Besides, the dancers are already shuffling out and Meg wants to see where the rest of them are going. 

Maman lets her down once more and Meg skips to catch the other girls. Maman follows after, pausing only at Meg’s behest to buy a packet of roasted nuts for the two of them to share. Though she only looks away for a moment to put down the coins, the little pause is all the time it takes for Meg, swept up in the gaggle of dancers, to disappear into the freak show.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Madame Giry steals a child and Meg Giry has a tea party.

By the time Meg realizes where she is, it’s too late to turn back. Sorelli and another of the girls are holding her hands and someone must have overlooked Meg because she doesn’t have any money to pay for her presence here. 

The performers in this tent- and they all must be performers, as people simply don’t look this way- laugh and call to each other. The bearded lady is knitting and she waves to the dancers in a friendly manner, stroking her magnificent beard with a look that could belong on the face of the opera’s current diva. The strong man comes up behind her and lifts the chair upon which she’s seated, laughing a big strong laugh as he settles her on his shoulder. One man seems perfectly normal until he hiccups daintily, then opens his mouth to belch fire over their heads. The dancers shriek with terror before lapsing into hysterical giggles. 

One woman wears trousers to showcase the stumpy tail that extends from her lower back and she does a pirouette to show it off, one that has the bravest of the dancers pirouetting right back. She gives a tremulous smile as the tattooed man lunges out from behind her with a yell. Meg shrieks the loudest this time at the massive snake inked across his skin. It seems to be leering at her with its glittering green eyes and it moves as the man does, seeming to wind over his muscles and around his body. 

It really is all a show, Meg thinks, as the barker laughs at the dancers’ fear. The adults are putting on a little terror show. It’s an opera in the tents rather than the opera house. 

The observation is comforting, but doesn’t make it any less frightening when the barker calls, “And our final and most terrible act, ladies and gentlemen! Birthed from the very bowels of hell, we have a monster so vile, so terrible, that only our bravest can gaze upon it!”

“Meg!” Maman’s voice is barely audible under the barker’s booming voice, but Meg hears her anyway. Maman’s warm hands, colder now than they were before, find their way to Meg’s shoulders. She tries to pull Meg out of the crowd, but so many are pushing into the tent before them that the current of bodies carries them along into a tent marked with dark and terrible words.

Meg is pushed abruptly away from her mother by the crush of people. She finds herself turned around as she tries to make her way back, shoving into people’s legs and bouncing off skirts. And then she winds up before a great cage. 

“Come one, come all, and see the Devil’s Child!”

Meg blinks. There’s a boy in the cage, bare-chested and dirty, with a sack that looks like a sandbag over his head. He doesn’t look like any version of the devil she’s ever seen on the opera stage, no curling horns or long tail. He just looks small, curled around a stuffed toy. As she watches, he brings its paws together and there’s a little metallic noise.

Curious to see what it is, she moves closer, pressing her hands to the bars and putting her face between them. So interested is she in the toy that she doesn’t see the man in the cage until it’s too late. 

When the beating starts, Meg cringes back away from it, looking for her mother. Maman appears as if summoned as the strangers in the crowd jeer and the dancers shriek and, in a few strides, she is beside Meg, letting her hide her face in her black skirt. As the sickening sounds cease and the man roars, “Behold the Devil’s Child!” Meg peeks out from the skirt and sees the toy on the ground by the bars of the cage. 

It must be some strange instinct that sends her to pick it up and dust it, but it’s as she does that the man drops the boy to the floor like he’s a ruined composition. His face is hidden by his curled hands as his body crashes against the ground in a disarray of limbs. 

The bars of the cage clang as the man exits it to take up the hat of coins he’s earned and the crowd moves away with the clink of further coins. 

The boy scrabbles in the straw for the sack and jams it back over his head. It’s only then that he looks up and sees Meg there, holding the toy. The hole in the sackcloth is too small for her to see his eye properly, but his body hunches up like he might vomit, the face of his mask fixed on Meg’s hands.

“Meg,” says Maman, touching Meg’s shoulder. 

She doesn’t have to remind her. Meg knows to give back other people’s things. She holds it back out to him quickly. “It’s a nice monkey,” she says. It is a nice monkey; it looks like the painted one she’s seen clambering around in the pictures. 

“Meg,” says Maman again, but this time her voice sounds different. Sadder. 

“Maman, why doesn’t he have a coat?” As the boy comes creeping towards her, Meg stands firm, holding his toy out to him. She doesn’t want to put it back in the straw; she knows _she_ doesn’t like it when her doll is on the ground. Dolls belong tucked into bed with their children.

His hands are cold as the grave. Meg can feel it even through her gloves as he pulls the monkey from her grasp. The single eye under the mask is wide, darting quickly between her and her mother. “Maman, he doesn’t have a coat and it’s freezing.”

“I suppose it is.” Maman definitely sounds strange now, almost angry. 

“Everyone else had a coat.”

“They did.” Maman comes to stand beside Meg and holds out the packet of roasted nuts. The heat rising off them wisps in the air. “I don’t have a coat for him, my Meg, but take a few of these and you can share them.”

It takes a little coaxing, but the boy does come and stand by the bars with Meg, one hand still holding his toy tight to his chest. After she’s sure the boy will take the food if it’s offered (he does, seeming afraid that they’ll take it back), Maman leaves the packet in Meg’s hand and paces around the cage, examining it. 

The boy watches her walk, twisting his body to follow her as he munches on the peanuts Meg drops into his palm. 

“My maman teaches,” Meg explains to him, pouring another few morsels into his hand with her fingers curled around his. “I’m learning to dance from her.” 

The boy tilts his head, the crunching sounds coming from under the sack slowing. 

“Do you like to dance?” Meg lifts herself onto her toes and points her leg to show him. 

He considers her, then copies her pose, wobbling furiously. 

“Good,” Meg says, imitating her mother’s voice. “Mind your balance.” She pours more nuts into her own hand and examines what’s left of the bag. She has other treats ahead of her, she decides, and reaches out to set the bag in the boy’s hand. Still on her toes, she starts to spin slowly. 

“One day,” she says to the boy, holding her arms above her head, “I’m going to be a famous dancer. People will come to see me from all over. And Maman will get to sit in Box Five and watch me dance. Box Five is the best box in the whole opera house. Only very rich people get to sit there.”

He nods at her, tearing along the seam of the packet carefully to get at the bottom of it. 

Encouraged by this, Meg continues, “I’m going to have lots of pretty dresses too and I won’t yell if someone accidentally rips one because I have so many.” She swishes her skirt as her spinning slows to a stop, too interested in thoughts of her own success to continue. “People will think I’m a fine lady and will take off their hats when they see me.” She doffs an imaginary cap at him.

He taps his forehead with the hand holding the packet, then sweeps her a silly, over-exaggerated bow. 

He doesn’t seem devilish either, Meg thinks to herself. He seems silly. Really, the only scary thing about him is the sack over his head. She comes back to the bars, curling her hands around them and pressing her face between them. “What’s your name anyway? Mine’s-“

She’s cut off by a triumphant noise from her mother and a muted clang. Suddenly, Maman is within the open door of the cage, holding out her hand to the boy. 

He startles at her intrusion, but she says in her sharp ‘pay attention to the lesson’ voice, “If you should like to stay here, you may. However, I do not believe in such treatment of children. You might be able to make your own way elsewhere.”

“You could come to the opera house with us,” Meg suggests. “Maman could teach you to dance too.”

Maman looks at Meg a moment, then a sound beyond the tent’s cloth draws her attention. She listens intently, saying to the boy, “I ask only that you decide to go or to stay quickly. Your... caretaker seems to be returning.” 

The boy’s hand curls around Maman’s quickly at that and Meg sees her mother’s face sadden a moment. Then she says, “We’d best go now.”

Meg watches her mother undo the ties of her own cloak and drape it over the boy’s head. Then she is scooped up into Maman’s arms and the three of them walk out of the tent. 

Maman seems to be walking a great deal faster than normal and Meg is glad of her position in her arms. The boy stumbles a little, but Maman’s hand remains curled around his own. 

“Madame!” calls a young voice. “Madame, is it time to go?”

“Ah, Sorelli,” says Maman. Before Sorelli or her friends can spy the sackcloth mask, Maman pulls the boy close to her skirt, hiding in its folds what the cloak does not. She addresses her next words to the eldest of the girls in Sorelli’s group, Andrée. “Andrée, be sure of everyone before you bring them home. Meg needs her rest and this one seems to be unwell, but the rest of you have until midnight to be back in your beds.”

“Midnight!” Sorelli’s green eyes sparkle in the wavering torchlight. “Thank you, Madame!” 

“Yes, Madame,” says Andrée, who is too dignified to squeal like Sorelli, but cannot stop a smile from turning up the corners of her mouth. 

The girls rush away then to find and tell the others, delighting too much in their extended curfew to be interested in the person under Maman’s borrowed cloak.

It is only when they reach the circus’s borders that Meg, over Maman’s shoulder, sees the calamity beginning at the freak show tent. But by then the Giries and the boy have entered the Parisian streets. 

Meg can tell that Maman is in no mood for chatter, so the only sounds of the walk back are those of Maman’s boots and the boy’s cloth shoes. 

Upon reaching the opera house, they take the way into the dormitories and then into Maman and Meg’s room off those. It is only then that Maman sets Meg down and releases the boy’s hand. He stands, shaking, in the middle of the room, holding his monkey to his birdlike chest.

“Welcome to the Opera Populaire,” Maman says simply. “I am Madame Giry and this is my daughter Meg.”

The boy looks around himself, seeming to collect his wits. Then he bows from the waist, one hand coming up to clutch at the sack over his head. His whole body shakes as he straightens. “Th-“ he starts. “Th..”

Meg winces. He sounds terrible, raspy like the way she does in the dim hours of the morning when she needs water. 

Her mother draws the same conclusion, for she softly says, “Hush. Whatever it is can wait until I’ve made you both tea.”

Maman walks from the room and Meg hoists herself up onto the bed. “You can sit,” she says, watching the boy fidget. “Maman won’t mind.”

She had meant one of the chairs, but he lowers himself to the floor at her words. His legs are almost as long as a dancer’s, but he is mottled and pale in a less than fashionable way. While the boy is thin, as is the style among dancers, he is bony rather than slender and lacks the muscle of the older girls. Meg herself is dark, like her father, and she is beautiful, like both her parents. She had heard a singer say once that beauty is always in fashion.

He looks out of place in Maman and Meg’s room too. The lamp seems to shed cozy yellow light on everything but him. With the sack over his head, he almost looks ready to be executed. Meg knows the trick of stage executions, of hiding a false head in a bag in order to appear to chop it off a person’s shoulders. But under the sackcloth is the boy’s very real head. If anyone were to execute him, it would be his real head that rolls across the floor. 

The thought sends a chill of fear down her spine and she shivers. Something thumps a rhythm and she fancies it is the executioner’s drum before she sees that the boy is tapping the heel of his hand to the floor. It is a simple little pattern he taps out and every few moments, he presses the monkey toy’s paws together with a tiny clang. It has a set of little cymbals, she realizes. Before, in the dim lighting of the tent, she had thought them coins. 

He glances up at her as he plays, his bony shoulders high around his ears. The rhythm is simple. Were Meg older and more experienced, she might have found it too simple. But Meg is young and Meg is a dancer, and dancers know that there is only one thing to be done with a rhythm. 

As her heart settles in her chest (headless boys cannot make music, after all), Meg toes off her boots and sets her stocking feet on the floor. 

“Tum tarra tum, tum tarra tum,” she mumbles to herself, one two and three, one two and three. 

Meg doesn’t notice that Maman has returned. Maman has come into the room near silently, carrying a tray of tea things, but, rather than announce herself, she has settled herself in the doorway, watching Meg tap out tentative footwork. In fact, Meg only realizes that Maman is there when the boy’s hands stop tapping out his little song and he withers like a flower in winter. 

Maman doesn’t comment, only moves past him to set the tray on her dresser. Steam curls up from the cups, fogging the mirror before her. 

The boy receives a cup first and his hands curl around it slowly. The rest of his body is still, the toy monkey sitting in the crook of his arm, guarded by his bony elbow. He seems to think Maman might steal it away from him. 

Meg decides to show him otherwise. Before Maman can hand her a cup of tea as well, Meg clambers over the bed up to the pillows. Pulling back the blanket, she uncovers her own doll, La Bella, who she carries back with her. 

Maman makes a noise when Meg slides down the bed to the floor, but Meg wiggles over to the boy before she can be scolded, holding out La Bella for his inspection. “Can she and your monkey have tea together? Her name is La Bella and she’s very nice.” 

The boy pulls at his mask, tugging the eyehole against his face so he can better look at La Bella. The doll is handmade. Papa had stitched her together to look like Meg, intending her to be like a baby doll perhaps. But Meg has always been interested in the doll being a celebrity or a queen instead, so La Bella was given a skirt like those of the older dancers and a cap of curls that has frayed at the ends. 

After a moment of inspection, he glances up at Maman. Meg looks too, but Maman is sitting at her vanity instead, looking at the script for one of the new shows. 

Meg, who knows her mother, recognizes that Maman is staring maybe too hard to really be reading, but the boy doesn’t know Maman and seems comforted by her disinterest. He untucks his monkey from his arm and brings it forward on his lap. He doesn’t loosen his grip on either it or his cup of tea, the latter of which he still hasn’t touched. 

Meg takes this as agreement and gets up to pour herself tea. Maman has put the tea things at her elbow on the vanity, so when Meg pours herself a cup, Maman’s hand supports the teapot for her though her eyes do not move from her script. 

Upon her return, Meg pretends to knock on a door. “Knock knock, Madame Bella is here to see Monsieur Monkey!”

The boy curls his legs so he sits cross-legged, leaning forward to look at her. 

Meg mimes the squeak of a door and then says disapprovingly, “My my, Monsieur, you must get those hinges looked at!”

Maman makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like a laugh, but when Meg and the boy turn to look, she is still studying the script. 

Settling down opposite him, Meg walks La Bella up to his legs and makes her tap at his monkey’s shoulder. “Ah, Monsieur, I am here to visit you. Shall we go down to the riverbank for a stroll today before we take tea?”

There’s a moment where Meg thinks that the boy doesn’t know how to play. He looks for too long at La Bella at his knee and at the monkey sitting on his crossed ankles. She can’t see his eye for he’s bowed his head to look at the dolls.

But then he makes the monkey’s head nod with a nudge of his finger. 

The end of Maman’s cloak, still draped around the boy’s shoulders, becomes the river. Monsieur Monkey and Madame Bella walk back and forth beside it. Madame Bella does all the talking while Monsieur Monkey nods. It’s only after their tea that Monsieur Monkey says anything, when La Bella says, “I must be off! I am meeting with my friend the famous dancer, Meg Giry! And you, you must go and meet your friend too! Your friend...”

Meg pauses here, for she had forgotten that she doesn’t know the boy’s name. But there is a raspy voice from under the sackcloth and it says, “Erik” so softly that she might have imagined it, that she hesitates to repeat it.

But La Bella is not Meg and La Bella says, “Of course! Your friend Erik!” and then she holds her hand to Monsieur Monkey’s painted smile to be kissed. 

If the boy under the sackcloth mask is called Erik, Meg thinks that the people at the circus must have been mistaken. The devil is named things like Mephistopheles and Lucifer, never Erik. So he must be just a boy after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve a very specific narrative weakness for little kids revealing plot through games of pretend and it is a problem. Hope you enjoyed!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Meg Giry acts as costumer and Madame Giry does her utmost as the resident voice of reason at bedtime.

Maman goes out into the dormitories when she hears the first of the dancers returning, leaving Meg to her own devices. Erik has been shooed into Maman’s little washroom and told firmly to clean himself up. Meg thinks that was a good idea of Maman’s because Erik smells a little off and he’s more filthy than the workmen who build the sets.

Meg knows to give people their privacy while they wash, but as far as she knows, there’s no rule about not talking to people while they’re washing. So she sits down in the chair closest to the door with La Bella on her lap and talks about the opera house. She tells him about the dancing (fun) and the divas (not so fun, but so beautiful). She tells him about the stage and how it seems to go on forever and about the world of walkways above it where people like Monsieur Buquet leap from rope to rope over everyone’s heads. 

“It’s just like the circus,” she says finally, unable to put into words exactly how lovely her opera house is. “People fly here too and we have costumes and horses and stories.”

Erik is quiet. He has been quiet this whole time, only occasionally making the faintest of sounds. 

“You’ll like it a lot here,” says Meg when he doesn’t say anything. “You can sleep here with us and Maman will teach you to dance too- we’ll get you a dance costume.” She has the fleeting idea of Erik dressed as he is- sack over his head and wearing ragged pants and cloth shoes- lined up beside the dancers his height and she giggles. He’d look silly like that- a little duckling next to swans.

The thought draws her on to a different one and she frowns, slipping off her chair and going to the wardrobe. Inside are Maman’s dresses and Meg’s dresses- but they don’t have anything for Erik. Stumped, she looks at the empty space in it a moment, petting La Bella’s curls. Maman’s clothes would be too big for him and Meg’s far too small. 

“Erik?” she calls. “I’m gonna go talk to Maman. I’ll be right back, so don’t get scared, okay?”

Maman has brought a chair and a script out to the hallway beside the dormitory. As Meg approaches, she sees Maman mark something on the page with her pencil. 

“Hello, my Meg. Is our guest cleaned up?” she asks, not once looking up from her work. Meg has always thought that Maman has a sixth sense for mischief and a sense beyond for Meg herself. 

Meg folds her hands before her and points a toe idly. “Maman, he doesn’t have any clothes.”

Maman looks up at that. “No, we’re lending him some of your papa’s things.”

Meg blinks. “But those are Papa’s.”

Her mother’s gaze softens with understanding and a hint of that sad wild something Meg had seen earlier. “Meg, your papa doesn’t need them anymore. And Erik doesn’t have anything.”

She bites her lip. “I suppose.”

“Besides, the clothes would have gone to someone anyway. They’re of good quality and it would be a shame to let them be eaten by insects.” Maman leans over and pokes Meg’s side with her fingers, wiggling them to tickle. “I shouldn’t like his clothes to be eaten.”

“Me neither,” Meg agrees, squirming away from her mother’s hand. “Are they still in your trunk?”

Maman’s hands return to the script in her lap, their work done with Meg cheered. “Yes. Would you like to lay them out for our guest?” 

“Yes! I’ll be a costumer!” She does a twirl of excitement.

Maman laughs, though Meg doesn’t understand quite why. “Of course, my Meg. A costumer today, a dancer tomorrow.”

Meg beams and scampers back to the room. She likes costuming. She’s too little to be anything but underfoot for the real costumers, but when her feet feel too clumsy, the seamstresses teach her hands to be clever. They make beautiful pieces of clothing out of anything, like Meg’s father made La Bella out of scraps. 

The trunk is at the bottom of the wardrobe. It is the only thing they never unpacked when Maman and Meg moved into the opera house for good after Papa died. It carries the rest of his things, his shirts and trousers and the flat cap he wore. When Meg pries it open, the smell of her father wraps around her like an embrace and she rocks back onto her heels a moment. La Bella is no match for Papa, but Meg gives her a cuddle anyway, suddenly aching for her father’s arms. This must be why they had never opened the trunk after packing it, to keep the memories from escaping. 

There’s a quiet splash of water from the washroom, reminding her that she has a mission. La Bella rests in the crook of her arm as she sorts through the clothes. The flat cap goes atop her own dark curls after a time; it keeps getting in the way of her search. 

Finally, she’s settled on clothing that she doesn’t remember seeing Papa wearing and gathers it up in her arms. “Erik! Erik, Maman said to give you some clothes! I’m going to put them by the door so you can get them!”

She sets them by the door and moves away, announcing as she does, “You can take them now! I’ll cover my eyes to preserve your modesty!” People are always covering their eyes to preserve others’ modesty in shows. Meg knows it’s a fancy way of saying “I think it’s rude of me to see you without clothes” and that only the very best of gentlemen in shows say it. 

(Gentlemen in the shows that make Maman tsk and send Meg to go play in the dormitories do not say it and Meg thinks there’s probably a connection there.)

Covering her eyes with one hand, she sits back down beside the trunk and breathes in. The smell of her father’s things makes her consider a new problem. What if the things no longer smell like him? Had Maman considered that Erik wearing them might make them smell like Erik rather than Papa? Meg wavers as she hears the rustle of clothing, chewing her lip nervously. What if Maman is upset when the clothes no longer smell like Papa? 

She peeks between her fingers at Erik. He’s wearing Papa’s clothes and they are very much too big for him, just as Maman’s dresses would be. The sleeves of Papa’s nightshirt flop over his hands and he’s tied it around the waist with the same knot of rope he’d used on his other clothes. His skinny mottled legs stick out from under the nightshirt’s hem like chicken legs. But the dirty sack is still sitting atop his shoulders with his eye still peeking through the hole in the fabric.

“You can’t wear that!” Meg protests, clambering up onto the bed to scold him. “It’s all dirty! You should wash it before it makes your face dirty too. Maman will make you scrub behind your ears a lot if she thinks you didn’t do it right, you know.”

He clutches at the hem of the sack, looking at her. 

“No, no, you have to take it off!” Meg pantomimes pulling a sack off her own head. 

He doesn’t seem to understand.

Meg huffs in frustration, putting La Bella down on the bed and looking around the room. “Here!” she says, descending on Maman’s cloak. “Trade you for it! It’s warm and soft and it has a hood!”

Erik shies away as she gets closer, bumping into the washroom door. 

“Erik, Maman will be upset if you aren’t cleaned up!” 

He flinches at the idea and his fingers curl all the tighter in his sack mask. 

“Erik, give it to me!”

What Meg does not expect is for Erik to bolt, twisting around her approach and running for the door. It’s only Maman’s appearance there and her hands landing on his shoulders that stops him from bursting out into the greater opera house halls. 

But the weight of her hands scares him more, his body twitching and shivering like a badly handled marionette. As Maman stands there, just holding his shoulders, he makes a high scratchy sound- something between a wail and a squeak- that has Meg’s eyes going big in her face.

“That’s enough of that,” Maman says sharply, giving Erik’s shoulders a firm but gentle push to guide him back into the room. Her heel hooks in the corner of the door, pulling it shut behind her. Without releasing Erik, she kicks her leg up and fastens the latch. Then, both feet back on the floor, she gives each of the children a stern look. “Why are we fussing?”

“Erik won’t take his mask off and it’ll make his face dirty!” Meg declares.

Maman does not blink, only redirects her eyes to the boy under her hands. “Ah. And, Erik, you do not wish to take off your mask?”

He nods.

She releases his shoulders to fold her arms before her. “Do you want to not wash your face?”

He shakes his head and Meg nods. That’s a very good answer. Maman holds no patience for those who do not wash their faces.

“You would like to keep your face hidden?”

He nods, quicker and more enthusiastically.

Oh. Meg thinks she should have known that. There is quite a lot of fuss being made about Erik’s face and she knows that undue fuss makes a lot of the older girls shy.

“Then we shall not press you to show your face. But your mask will need washing until we find a suitable one.”

Erik holds very still. 

“You will need one that will not draw undue attention and that will not fall from your face. I will ask the costumers about one tomorrow.” Maman pats his shoulders, slow and gentle. “Tonight, you can continue to wear this mask, but you must wash your face. I will not have dirt accumulating behind your ears.”

“I told you,” Meg says. 

“Meg Giry, you should be getting into bed and your own nightclothes.” Maman’s words hold no scolding as she unfolds a blanket and starts to make up a bed for Erik on the méridienne. 

Meg does as she’s told, scampering around in search of her nightgown and then for her mother’s as well while Maman is busy coaxing Erik to go and wash his face. When he finally goes, head hanging with reluctance, Meg has both nightgowns laid out. 

She and Maman dress together while Erik washes his face and Meg is tucked firmly into bed by the time he comes out again, La Bella and her papa’s hat nestled against her chest. The blankets are cool against her skin as she cranes her head to sneakily watch Maman convince Erik to lay down. 

He does not like her touching him and Maman is being good about it now that he is no longer launching an escape, standing at a distance from the méridienne and talking to him in a firm, quiet voice. Her tone offers no room for argument and Erik looks much like an argument might break him in half, but he stands resolute for a far longer time than Meg would. 

Maman has not lost her power however and, as Meg’s eyelids grow heavy and the blankets grow cozier around her body’s warmth, she vaguely sees Erik sit down and take the blanket from Maman’s hands. With that resolved, Meg lets her head drop back to her pillow and her heavy eyes close.

Maman sleeps beside her still, for Meg is very small indeed. When she is older, she will join the dancers in their dormitory and sleep among them, trading giggling secrets the way they do. But for now, she is safely tucked in with her mother only an arm’s length away should she dream badly.

As Maman draws her closer, Meg knows sleepily that there is no chance for bad dreaming with her mother in the room- her bold strong mother who is certainly brave enough and wise enough to do battle with any monstrous bad dream. 

Then she is asleep and dreaming of a riot of colorful dresses, whirling to music so beautiful that the music of the waking world cannot yet compare. She does not dream of the events of the night, nor of the boy who lies awake for quite some time after, listening to the gentle breathing of his saviors and toying with the gently clinking cymbals of his ragged monkey until the combination of sounds sends him off to sleep as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the length of time between this chapter and its predecessor! I fell temporarily out of love with Phantom during it (I blame Love Never Dies and _The Phantom of Manhattan_ , honestly), and so temporarily misplaced my motivation.
> 
> However, I’ve now read the comic Fantome-Stein (and do read it as well if you haven’t already; it’s marvelous) and we’re back in action! Hope you enjoyed this one! Have a brilliant day!


End file.
